A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels, or text navigation. GUIs are often found as the front-end to many different types of software programs, applications, and operating systems.
GUIs often employ graphs or charts. Graphs help to illustrate the meaning of data, the relationship between different pieces of information, trends, and so forth. There are many different types of graphs such as line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, spider charts, and scatter plots, among many others.
A histogram is a type of graph having rectangles or bins extending vertically from a horizontal axis and whose area is proportional to the frequency of a variable and whose width is equal to the class interval. A histogram, however, can consume a large amount of screen real estate. Histograms can be very inefficient in their use of screen real estate. Previous efforts to condense the histogram dataset into other data visualizations have resulted in a lack fidelity, require the user to repeatedly drill into many different levels to see detail, or both.
There continues to be a need for improved software and graphical user interfaces. It is desirable to have interfaces that are easy to use, allow users to visualize their data better or faster, allow users to visualize their data in different ways, and, in particular, provide a visually rich and compact data presentation with the ability to reveal high fidelity data as the user desires.
The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.